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Published: April 1st 2007
Hola,
Since I've mostly failed so far at providing people from home with wonderful stories about my life in Spain, and since traveling alone means that bizarre things keep happening to me and I don't have anyone to tell them to, I give you...MY SPRING BREAK TRAVEL BLOG. It should be amusing, at least. And I'll add pictures when I get home (and by "home" I mean Madrid...yikes).
Semana Santa: Background and historical implications I'm not actually supposed to get kicked out of my house until Monday, but my Señora is catching a bus back to her pueblo early friday morning, so there it is. This was kind of stressful because I was still not feeling well, and had finally convinced myself the day before (while trying to drag myself to the metro from my internship--which I'd left an hour early, because no amount of corporately sponsored 0.20€ hot chocolate could make me with-it enough to be able to find mistakes in final proofs of the infamous "New Drawing & Painting" textbook) that walking 40 km in the rain every day on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela like I'd planned really really wasn't what I needed to be
Here's my bed.
I have really fond memories of it. I spent a lot of time there during my stay in Cordoba. doing right now. I went to the doctor again Friday morning, too, and the visit lasted all of 15 minutes. He said my bronchitis is gone and beat me up for not taking the decongestant tea he'd prescribed. Apparently I would be feeling fine by now if I'd just taken my Beecham's Lemon (it's really disgusting and I'm not congested. I'm just the patient from Hell...). I don't think he really believed me when I said I'd been taking my antibiotics, either. He doesn't like me. But then I don't like me much either right now after letting myself be sick for a month and a half. But anyway. It's been a fabulous cultural experience.
At the last minute I decided to ship myself South, hoping I could spend my spring break sitting in the sun, trying to restore my health while reading and coughing delicately into my handkerchief like all those tubercular Romantic Poets (and by "all those Romantic Poets" I basically mean Keats, who ended up dying down there. Now I know why).
FRIDAY 30-3-07 I arrived in Córdoba at about 10:30pm, feeling pleased with myself. I saw all kinds of pretty things on my taxi ride
Art.
Even in my deepest misery I found solace in this fountain. It made me laugh. Every time I walked by it (and, somehow, I walked by it a lot). It's spitting! How is this attractive? Why would you put it outside of your house? to the hostel, so Córdoba was looking promising. My room had french doors that opened up onto a tiny balcony that overlooked the overgrown ruins of an old Andalusian house, which looked amazing in the moonlight. If worst came to worst and I never came up with a travel plan, I figured I could just stay in this room with a bottle of wine and see if I got bored enough to produce a novel or something.
My first burst of enthusiasm was dampened (no pun intended) when I went to have dinner in the bar across the street and the cute Spanish family who ran the place got into a big domestic dispute. Also, I was sitting at the bar (because I still haven't really figured out how you get a table here without looking awkward and clueless. Also, they make you pay more.), so I was right in the middle of it. I went back to my hostel and went to bed. I left the shutters open, even though the streetlight was bothering me, because I figured it would all be worth it when awoke the next morning to glorious Andalusian sunlight streaming through my windows (it's pretty
special, like the light in California--it's just different and you notice it). At least the mattress was amazing (oh god, I will never forget it). I didn't sleep very well, because my bed shared a wall with the next room's toilet, and from the sound of it the person in the next room wasn't having a good night. And the plumbing was weird, really, really loud. I kept waking up from Psycho-esqu dreams about someone breaking through my wall with a gigantic power drill. Because that is what it sounded like.
Saturday 31-3-07 The whole waking-up-bathed-in-Andalusian-sunlight thing was a bust, too. It was raining. But I like rain. By the time I was ready to go out, it had let up and it was really kind of charming. Cordoba was green and white and dripping, which is perfect because it's the effect they try to achieve with all their fountains. I got breakfast--toasted bread with olive oil and tomato paste and fresh orange juice from one of these ridiculous Wallace & Grommit-like orange juice squeezing machines that they have all over the place here (I have pictures). This turned out to be pretty much the only really satisfying thing
At least it's dry in the Zara fitting rooms
And so, I give you this warning of things to come. Orange. Oversize. Etc. I spent money on this day (or maybe this trip, possibly my whole life. It's that good. When I get home I'm going to use my powers of influence in UPS's SUB to get them to start providing this stuff for me...Diana?!). I followed it up with ice cream, because the ice cream is pretty much the reason I came back to AndalucÃa. It was Cart d'Ore brand, which is sort of like having Dryers when you really wanted Mallard's (for those of you from Bellingham), but still, it was pretty decent.
It started to rain again. I didn't have a map. My memory of what followed is spotty. I ended up stumbling on the old Jewish neighborhood, which is where they nail the tourists with cute arabic-influenced souvenirs, but it was kind of neat. Narrow, winding streets and old whitewashed houses and all that. This neighborhood has one of Spain's three remaining synagogs left from before the Jewish population was expelled in something like the 1400's. It was small, so it was crowded with tourists, but it was neat. And it had a roof. That was really nice. Admission is free for EU citizens, but the rest of the
world has to PAY-- 0.30€. Haha.
I wandered out of the tourist quarter, hoping I could find something inside to do. There's a new Mr. Bean movie out(!), and I feel like seeing Mr. Bean dubbed over in Spanish can really only improve the experience (especially since people are angry with the president right now and accuse him, among other things, of looking like Mr. Bean. Seriously. For a good time, google "Zapatero" and "Mr. Bean"). So I spent most of the day wandering around hoping I'd run into a movie theatre and getting soaked in the process. Apparently I'm not Spanish enough yet to be alright with stopping people in the street and asking for directions (although a few people stopped ME to ask where things were). So it was really a pretty miserable day. But I like Córdoba. And there was a nice half hour somewhere in there that I spent in a trendy Spanish store trying on and photographing examples of horrible cutting edge European spring fashion, because I feel it is my duty to warn North America of what is coming (it's just like Bird Flu. You know one of these days it's going to cross
the Atlantic...and then what?). This is also when I had honestly the worst experience I've ever had eating. It's my fault because I'd decided that it would be a good idea to have a beer (and I did this mostly because sometimes they give you food when you order a drink. But they didn't), and then realized that I really needed to eat something fast and went to the first place I saw, which was a bad idea anyway because the menú del dÃa was advertised as 9€, which is usually more than I try to pay. Also, the place was empty and called "Candy." The waiter was greasy, and the paella was greasy and cold and from a box (which is fine, as long as it's not greasy and cold) and I couldn't figure out what kind of meat it had in it. I'm not sure how to convey how completely horrible this experience was. It just was. There were green things stuck on the side of my fork. I really thought that I'd probably get food poisoning. And then when I went to pay, the cook was standing there and asked me how I'd liked it. They charged
me 10.50€ and I didn't even want to stay long enough to ask where the extra 1.50€ had come from.
I finally found my hostel again, completely by chance, at about 6:00. By then I had realized that I would probably be wanting another night there, since nothing else I had seen really looked better, and maybe, maybe, my neighbor wouldn't be sick again (and anyway, I loved that balcony, and really really did want a chance to see if it + a bottle of wine would = the arrival of my literary genius). At first the guy said there wasn't any room, and I kind of freaked out because it was the beginning of Holy Week in AndalucÃa (which means tourists all over) and sleeping on a bus back to Madrid would really have been a fitting end to the day I'd had. But then he said that there was one room that would be available a little later, it was just that "Algo pasó" in this room during the night, and it needed some extra cleaning. I couldn't quite understand what he said, which I think is a good thing, but I thought I caught the words "niño"
All the streets look like this in Cordoba.
Great for pictures. Not so great for getting around without a map. (which is a lot better than what I had been imagining), "fregarla un poco" and "no pasa nada" ("clean it up a little", "no problem"; he grinned). I asked him where I could find a movie theatre. Finally. It wasn't far, just in a direction I hadn't gone yet, and I had a nice walk along the river on my way, because it wasn't raining by then, and the Guadalquivir is actually a real river (I was surprised and impressed. I haven't seen this much water since I left home, except for, you know, the rain). The movie theatre is in a mall, and I had fun seeing what malls are like here. I wasn't even sure if they had them. I was 10 minutes too late for "Las Vaccaciones de Señor Bean," so I saw Epic Movie instead. It wasn't bad. At least the Scary Movie people have gotten themselves a fresh genre to spoof, so there were some clever parts, although I still always leave those movies wondering if they were worth the two hours of my life I've devoted to them. And I was wet and the movie theatre was cold, so the whole movie idea kind
The Guadalquivir
This is the swampy part, full of exotic looking white birds and these yellow flowers that smelled amazing. My second day of wandering around Cordoba was a lot better than the first, but this was maybe the best part of it. of defeated its purpose anyway. I got home at 9, got into bed with a book and stayed there for about 15 hours. Really not a bad way to end things.
Sunday 1-4-07 The great thing about my trip to Cordoba was that, miserable as the first day was, I really got to know my way around. It hardly rained at all the second day, and the sun even came out a few times. I walked along the river and found some places I'd missed the day before...actually, I was wandering around almost as aimlessly as I had before, but it was nicer without the rain. I had (and maybe still have...) sworn off menus del dia, and had bread and cheese and olives in the courtyard of Cordoba's big landmark mosque-turned-cathedral. No greasy mystery mean, the sun actually came out for a while, and I befriended a pigeon, and then almost killed him with a breadcrumb that turned out to be too big to swallow (he finally got it down after about 10 minutes of weaving and lurching, and I was glad, because, I mean, what a way to die).
It was getting a little late by the
time I got around to actually going inside the Mezquita-Catedral, and I wasn't quite in the mood to be as impressed by it as I should have been, but I like looking back at my pictures. When it was built it was the 3rd largest mosque in the world, and after the reconquest it was sort of awkwardly converted into a cathedral, making it just about the most bizarre church you'll ever see.
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Carol Bohmbach
non-member comment
Even misery can be fun
Hi Alana, Sorry you've been sick so much of your time in Spain but somehow you've managed to make even that sound amusing. I love your blog; it was worth the wait! Keep the entries coming. I do wonder, though, how you got the internship with the publisher unless your Spanish spelling is a lot better than your English. ;o)